Today -100: May 14, 1924: Of cooks, circuses, and Klandiana

And this is what happens when you hold the Olympics in Paris: cooks in hotels and restaurants will strike on opening day.

Calvin Coolidge, who it is difficult to picture attending a circus, attends a circus. Evidently he’s really loved circuses since he was a child. He does not eat any peanuts or laugh at the anti-Prohibition jokes, but is observed to applaud most at the bareback riding, trained dogs, and trapeze artistes. His wife likes the clowns. Reporters like counting how many times Coolidge claps at the circus.

The Indiana Ku Klux takes control of its own policies, effectively but not formally seceding from the klannish mother ship. It elects D.C. Stephenson Grand Dragon. Stephenson sues Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans and other national Klan leaders for libel and slander (the details of which are not listed in the NYT), asking $200,000 in damages. Also, the Democratic nominee for governor Carleton McCulloch, who also garnered that hopeless nomination in 1920, says the Republican primary showed that the R’s have been captured by the Klan (Fact Check: true).

In the French parliamentary elections, Blaise Diagne is re-elected for the part of Senegal that’s officially part of France. A negro, as the NYT feels obliged to clarify. He is also mayor of Dakar.

Also, Communist Jacques Doriot wins a seat from Saint-Denis (Paris). He is currently in prison for protesting the Ruhr occupation and inciting troops to disobedience. His election will ensure his release. ....Aaaand later he’ll become a fascist.

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Today -100: May 13, 1924: Philatelists of the world unite!

Rep. John Langley (R-Kentucky) is found guilty of conspiracy to sell whisky, 1,400 cases of it, in 1921. His role in the scheme was to get  the KY prohibition commissioner to authorize the release of that whisky. Langley will be sentenced to 2 years.

Russia complains to Poland about persecution there of the Orthodox Russian church.

Soviet Russia is launching the “Philintern,” an international stamp-collectors association. Possibly because they’re pissed at how many fake Russian stamps are circulating.

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Today -100: May 12, 1924: Of slow-ass radio waves, left cartels, and German days

Capt. T.J.J. See, US Navy astronomer and professor of Mathematics and Being Wrong, has “proven” that radio waves are slower than the speed of light (165,000 miles per second v. 188,000).

France’s governing alliance, the Bloc National, loses the parliamentary elections (and 77 seats) to the Cartel des Gauches, an alliance of the Radicals (who aren’t radical), the Socialists (who aren’t socialist) and a few smaller left-wing groups, but not including the Communists, who get nearly 10% of the votes but fewer than 5% of the seats. PM Raymond Poincaré is definitely out, and probably President Alexandre Millerand as well. Future PM André Tardieu is defeated, but André Marty (Communist), who was sentenced by a court-martial to 20 years for his role in the Black Sea Mutiny, is elected from Paris. The unexpected victory of the left or center-left, whatever you want to call it, is partly a reaction to Poincaré’s Ruhr policy and partly to the decline of the franc and the introduction of new taxes.

German nationalists hold a “German Day” in Halle, with 70,000 goose-stepping vets (some of them in top hats, frock coats and white ties, to the NYT’s amusement) reviewed by acquitted insurrectionist Gen. Erich Ludendorff. Police deny permission to Communists to hold a rival “Worker Day” and violently repress their attempt to hold one anyway, killing 11.

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Today -100: May 11, 1924: Humanity toward Humanity

A cross is burned on the grounds of a Catholic church in Armonk, New York, presumably a Ku Klux Klan warning against building a new chapel.

The Italian Fascists are divided over tactics between those who want Fascism, now that it’s won, to disarm and “become absorbed by the nation,” and those who want it to remain a revolutionary minority and impose its policies by force, if necessary, and to kill Socialists and Communists. These Fascist tendencies are called the Legalists and the Savages.

Eugene O’Neill, “popularly regarded as America’s poet laureate of gloom,” denies that his new play “All God's Chillun Got Wings,” which stars Paul Robeson and Mary Blair as an interracial couple, advocates intermarriage: “I am never the advocate of anything in any play – except humanity toward Humanity.” He says the characters represent no one but themselves.

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Today -100: May 10, 1924: Burned

The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) wants a referendum on the Dawes Plan, which they support but which the parties on the far left and far right that did so well in the Reichstag elections do not.

William Burns, head of both the Burns International Detective Agency and the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, resigns the latter post 2 days after admitting that he sent agents to dig up dirt on Democratic senators.

Burns will be replaced, on a (ahem) temporary basis, by 29-year-old J. Edgar Hoover.

The House of Representatives votes 191-171 to reject Coolidge’s request to postpone Japanese exclusion 8 months. And now I understand why he wanted that: so he’d have time to negotiate with Japan on ending the Gentlemen’s Agreement rather than do it unilaterally.

Louisiana hangs 6 Italian men for a single murder committed during a bank robbery. One stabs himself several times with a pocket knife – “where Lamantia had concealed the knife no official could learn.” They hang him anyway, sitting in a chair.

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Today -100: May 9, 1924: Organized rascality is the worst kind of rascality

Worries of a Communist threat in Germany, mostly by encouraging strikes in the Ruhr and elsewhere. The KPD opposes the Dawes Plan on reparations as “enslavement” of Germany. The government worries that France will continue to demand coal reparations at the same levels during the strike and then seize the mines for non-compliance, which does sound very much like something France would do.

Tammany fails to elect a new Boss, and appoints a committee of 7 – including 3 women – to recommend one.

Sir James Craig, prime minister of Northern Ireland, says rather than draw the border with the Irish Free State so that Catholic areas in Counties Tyrone and Fermanagh would go to the Free State, the Catholics in those areas should be “swapped” with Protestants in the South.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge has a plan for an entirely new World Court. Possibly he doesn’t know that there already is a World Court, established by, you know, the World, with 45 member nations.

Canadian Sen. J.D. Taylor charges that there is “organized rascality” in the National Railway and Steamship Depts.

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Today -100: May 8, 1924: Of delays, skullduggery, and klandidates

Acceding to Coolidge’s request, Congress will delay the ban on Japanese immigrants 8 months, until March 1925 (Spoiler Alert: no, it won’t). I’m not sure how this is supposed to mollify Japan. He waited to request this delay until after the California primary.

William Burns, head of the Bureau of Investigation, admits to the Senate DOJ committee that former attorney general Harry Daugherty ordered him to send agents to Montana to investigate Sen. Burton Wheeler and assigned other agents to follow witness Gaston Means.

Klan-supported candidate for Indiana governor Ed Jackson wins the Republican primary.

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Today -100: May 7, 1924: It must be rather jolly to be a king

Pres. Coolidge opposes an amendment to the Senate tax bill making tax returns public. However, he’s not specifically threatening to veto the bill; in fact, as a policy he never says in advance whether he’ll veto a bill because it would look like he was trying to dictate to Congress.

Sir James Craig, prime minister of Northern Ireland, says he won’t appoint a representative on the boundary commission. Why such a rush to establish the border between NI and Free State?, he asks. If settlements, treaties and such are to serve reconciliation, they must be signed in their hearts, not on paper, he says. Also, it’s not a political subject, but a matter for the Empire, he says. He really doesn’t want a border agreement, does he?

There is controversy over Charles Sims’s portrait of King George V, possibly because they make him look like a can-can dancer (“paint me like one of your French girls.”) The Daily Express says he looks like a short-sighted man who has mislaid his glasses. The London Times, however, thinks he looks like “it must be rather jolly to be a king.” George is in fact not jollified by the painting and will return it to Sims. The Royal Academy will cut out and burn the head part, then later the rest. The picture below is a surviving version of the original.

England has the first performance of German opera since the war, Wagner’s Das Rheingold, conducted by Bruno Walter. It’s well-received.

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Today -100: May 6, 1924: Of elections, flu cures, and georges

German elections (counting is still going on): While the outcome is presented as a victory for implementation of the Dawes Plan and a consequent de-escalation of hostilities with France, and the coalition government is likely to continue in office, its constituent centrist parties all lose votes. Parties on the right and left which reject the Weimar Republic increase their share of the vote, the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) getting 19.5%, the Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP), standing in for the banned Nazis, 6.5%. The Communists (KPD) gain significantly with 12.6%, quadrupling their seats, while the Socialists (SPD) drop to 20%. The NYT says the extreme right didn’t do nearly as well as expected; the NYT will consistently underestimate the threat from the extreme right for the next decade.

The Army tests chlorine gas as a cure for influenza in horses and mules. And it works!

Sens. George Pepper, George Moses, George Norris, George McLean, and Walter George join the Society for the Prevention of Calling Pullman Car Porters “George.”

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